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The following dispatch is from the Com-manding Officer of a United States Navaltask force which has just scored a smash-ing victory over the Japs in the Pacific.Sent to Rear Admiral W. H. P. Blandy,Chief of the Bureau of Ordnance, it ex-presses deep appreciation for the excellentequipment being provided our fightingships by the men and women of the pro-duction lines.

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Via Rear AdlDiral W. 'H. p..Blandy

"The 'X' Destroyer Squadron and the 'X' Cruiser Division have just completedthirty-s~~ hours of nearly continuous battle, starting with two shore bombardments downthe throat of the enemy, continuing ~ith a three-hour night sea battle against heavy Japa-nese forces and ending by beating off an attack of seventy to eighty Japanese planes.All this in enemy waters. Our casualties were small. The enemy's casualties in all battleswere large. The enemy was routed. Destroyers fired nearly all their torpedoes and am-

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munition ending the battles expecting to fire star shells and depth charges against enemyvessels. Ordnance equipment worked so well we forgot about it. Not a single materialcasualty beyond burning off all the paint and canvas: We are proud of our magnificentseamen. We are also proud of our equipment. It hits fast, hard, accurately and oh so

effectively.

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i "Will you convey our appreciation to the men and women wh'o by their skill andconscientious efforts have given us the means to win our battles? May God bless them."

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JANUARY 7, 1944

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An American soldier wounded in Sicily by shrapnel is being given blood plasm -a

COPPER COMMANDO is the officialnewspaper of the Victory Labor-Manage-ment Production Committees of the Ana-conda Copper Mining Company and itsUnion Representatives at Butte, Ana-conda, East Helena and Creat Falls, Mon-tana. It is issued every two weeks. • ••COPPER COMMANDO is headed by ajoint committee from Labor and Manage-ment, its policies are shaped by. both sidesand are dictated by neither .••• COPPERCOMMANDO was established at therecommendation of the. War Departmentwith the concurrence of the War Produc-tion Board. Its editors are Bob Newcomband Marg Sammons; its safety editor isJohn L. Boardman; its ch'ief photograp,heris AI Cusdorf; its staff photographeris Les Bishop .•.. Its Editorial Board con-sists of: Denis McCarthy, CIO; John F.Bird, AFL; Ed Renouard, ACM, fromButte; Dan Byrne, CIO; Joe Marick, AFL;C. A. Lemmon, ACM, from Anaconda;Jack Clark, CIO; Herb Donaldson, AFL,and E. S. Bardwell, ACM, from GreatFalls •••• COPPER COMMANDO is,mailed to the home of every employee ofACM in the four locations-if you arenot receiving your copy advise COPPERCOMMANDO at 112 Hamilton Street,.. Butte, or, better stil~, drop in and tell us.This is Vol. 2, No. 10.

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JANUARY 7, 1944

Signal Corps PhO~O

In This IssueFRONT COVER 1

Pin-up pin girls, Jean and Joyce Morgan,shown on the front cover, are the daugh- •ters of Gene Morgan of the PurchasingDepartment at Great Falls. Why arethey called pin-up pin girls? Because theyare pin girls at the Club at Great Fallsand too attractive not to be pinned up.

VIA REAR ADMIRAL W. H. P.BLAN DY. •......................................... 2

A message was sent to Rear Admiral W.H. P. Blandy, Chief of the Bureau ofOrdnance, from a Commanding Officerof a United States Naval task force whichhad just scored a victory over the Japs.The message was not for the Rear Ad-mi ral but for the men and women on theproduction lines.

TI M BER! •............................................. 4

Out of the mines "timber" when some-one calls it may mean they've hit thejackpot. But in the mines timber, whenproperly installed, helps hit the jackpotof safety. There are different sizes andshapes of timber, but all of each particu-lar kind is uniform.

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THE RESEARCH DEPARTMENT GAbout the turn of the century the Re-search Department at Anaconda startedas a 'Testing" Department. Times havechanged. Today the Research Depart-ment has a building to itself. It's com-plete with offices, a crushing room,laboratories and a sample. preparationroom.

.THE YOUNGER SET -- 9.The children from the Collins' school inBlack Eagle at Great Falls are broughtover to the Clubhouse at the Plant fortheir Christmas program. So many of themen at the Plant had boys and girls parti-cipating in the program that we thoughtyou'd like to see them, along with MissCollins, . primary teacher for forty-oneyears.

CLEAN SAFETY SLATES ... ~.............. 10.\ At Great Falls a drawing is held annually'at the Christmas smoker held in the Club-house. For each working month-free of

I accidents-the employee's name is in-serted in a capsule. The capsules aredrawn by the' judges and the winners re-ceive War Bonds..3. e...,ppoZl'

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TilDher!When you hear someone call out "tim-ber," out of the mines it means they'vehit the jackpot. In the mines, timberinghelps hit the jackpot of safety. It takesa lot of timber to make undergro'l,ltdmining safe. Posts, caps, girts, lagging,blocks and wedges are brought -to themine yard from Rocker, all cut to be usedunderground.

•IN the past, timber- at the various minesin Butte required different framings. Atthat time each mine framed its own tim-ber, and a framing from one mine mightnot fit a framing for another mine. Nowthe picture has changed. The sawmill atRocker, just outside of Butte, framesstandard timber for all the mines, and itis all uniform. From Rocker the framedtimber is shipped into the Butte mines onrailroad flat cars, such as you see in thelower picture. It is unloaded in the mineyard and is all .ready to be lowered under-ground when the need arises.

Approximately twenty loaded carscome into the Mountain Con yard eachweek. There are usually two hundredeighty caps and posts to a car, but a carwill bring in four hundred fifty girts.Two cars of three-inch regular laggingare needed at about 2100 pieces to a car.This three-inch Iagglng is used for backlagging and flooring. At least 1,000pieces of two-inch lagging are neededeach week for lagging the sides of driftsand raises and also for holding waste in/

stopes where the ore has been extracted.Stults run about one hundred fifty to aload and a load each week arrives.Where regular timber is not necessary,stulls are used in stulling the ground.You can't go in the Mountain Con yardand not notice the pile of timber, so wethought you'd like to see these posts,caps, girts, laggings, blocks and wedgesand get acquainted with the various cuts.Then in the next issue of COPPER COM-MANDO, we'll go underground with theboys and see how they are used.

In the upper picture the timbers inthe foreground are gill caps and are usedfor timbering crosscuts or drifts. Thestacked timbers back of the sill caps arechute braces and the pieces not piled, to

• either side of the chute braces. are girts.Girts are used as braces for timbering sillsets and raise and stope sets. The lowerpicture shows stope posts being unloadedat the Mountain Con,.4. JANUARY,. 1944:

HERE you see the unloading of sill posts at the mine yard. Sillposts are framed on one end. Sometimes the framing is cut offand the boys who work underground call them "bald headedposts:' Actually ~ithout the framing they're stu lis.

THIS is a shot to check yourself on. There are sill caps, girts,ties, wedges. and regular three-i~ch lagging in this picture. It'sup to you to figure out which is which. After you figure outwhat they all are, can you answer what they are used for?

THERE'S a pile of it and it's all three-inch lagging. If youwant to do a bit of flooring this is what you need. Or if you wantto cover sets, then again you place an order for this three-inchlagging. Around 4,200 pieces of it are used each week.

DID you know that this pile is made up of tunnel posts and tun-nel caps? The tunnel cap has only one ten-inch framing whichsets directly on top of the post. Don't confuse the tunnel capwith the stope cap for it is framed down to a four-inch horn.

HERE'S an easy one. Every one knows that those are stullson the truck and that they are used for bracing the groundwhere framed timber is not used. But the boards to the right,what are they? That's chute lagging and is used for lining.

JANUARY 7, 1944

STOPE posts and sill posts are being unloaded here ready togo underground. The stope posts are used in timbering raisesand stopes and the sill posts are used for timbering drifts. Don'tforget which is w~ich before we go underground...;) .

rEheBesear~h

Depar'lDeo'The Research Department at Anacondastarted as a "Testing" department aboutthe turn of the century. But you can'thold a good department down. Nowthere is a Research Building completewith offices. a crushing room, labora~tories and a sample preparation room. '

WITH the turn of the century camethe "New Works" at the Smelter at Ana-conda. Although the processes weremuch the same as those which had been """"used at the "Old Works." a lot of newequipment-larger and of newer design~was brought in. The reason for it: theButte ores were becoming leaner and thedays of "rule of thumb" metallurgy werepassing. More attention was being givento sampling and recovery of copper .. Thenew equipment required study and in-vestigation to bring it up to maximum ef-ficiency.

In 1902 the Testing Departmentwas established. located in the basementof the present laboratory building. It waslargely a "Testing" department and op-erated until 1921. when it was combinedwith the Research Department. With1912 and 1913 came a campaign of im-provement of processes and developmentof new processes which led to the treat-ment of zinc and phosphate ores at Ana-conda. Too, tests were made for opera-tions of the Company located in other lo-calities. Much of this investigation workwas done at Anaconda and on January 1,1915. the Research Department was es-tablished with F. F. Frick in charge. An-other year and it was evident that largerquarters were necessary for the plannedprogram, so the Research Building, shownin the upper picture, was provided. It isequipped for both small-scale tests andsemi-commercial tests in many types ofconcentration, as well as for laboratoryand small-scale commercial investigationsof leaching, electrolytic precipitation andsmelting. .

In general the work of the Depart-ment involves the treatment of ores. Of-fice space is provided for discussion ofplans, laying out of programs and prep-aration of reports. That's Oscar (Ole)Olsgaard, Fred Frick, research engineer,and Fred Roeder in the center picture, lay-ing plans for the future work on the Hill.A crushing room, a laboratory for small-scale work, a laboratory for semi-com-mercial test work and a sample prepara-tion room are provided. Usually ores forinvestigation come to .the building incoarse form, so the first step is to crushand grind them. For the most part of thetime, testing samples from about one-halfto ten pounds in sizes are used. In the.6. JANUARY 7, 1944

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bottom picture opposite page HaroldMitchell. George La Blanc. [r., and EdTopsich are crushing ore. The crusher isin the back of the machine in the picture.The crushed ore moves from the crusherto a 'set of rolls which crushes the orefurther and then-the ore moves to the dou-ble-deck vibrating screen which you see inthe picture. The oversized ore stays ontop of the screen and is sent back throughthe rolls. The undersized drops throughand is the finished product.

The top picture shows Kurt Ruck-wardt making a flotation test at the flo-tation laboratory. The results of thistest will be the same as will eventuallyshow in the larger operation in the plant.First they are worked out here in the lab-oratory; then a test is made at the pilot'plant. From these tests the plant scale

operation is recommended. The end re-sult is the same. Often times much val-. uable information is gained and a com-plete process can be pretty well workedout on this scale. The small-scale workoften leads to semi-commercial test workwhere a ton of ore per day may behandled in small-scale continuous com--mercial machines.

Test work always leads to samplesfor chemical analysis. The ore and theproducts of test work must be sampledand analyzed in order to determine whathas been accomplished. Sample prepara-tion is an important part of the work. Ingeneral the ores and test products mustbe ground to four-thousandths of an inchin size for analysis ana care must betaken that samples are not "salted" fromother samples. The samples after prep-

aration. are then analyzed at the chemicallaboratory. The analyses together with thedata taken during test work are workedup into reports for consideration for largeoperations. That's Jack Nowlin in thesample preparation room in the lowerpicture. A sample was oversized, aftergoing through the pulverizing process, soJack pulverized it by hand ·in the. mortarshown in the picture and was brushing itonto the screen. After it is screened, thesample is rolled to make it uniform andthen bagged and sent to the laboratoryfor analysis.

In addition to participating in theimprovement and deveiopment of metal-lurgical and chemical processes used atAnaconda and elsewhere by the Ana-conda Company. the Research Depart-ment has served as a training school,

JANUARY 7, 1944 s 7 •

RICHT TO THE END!

By now most of us have been able toget the idea that the tide of war hasswung in favor of our side. The recentconferences attended by the leaders ofthe United Nations dearly indicate that ablueprint for the final stages of this warhas been prepared. Recent victories onall fronts have given us a .strong feetin,of hope. In other words. the end of thewar, probably for the firs,t time, is insight.

These sentiments must be he3rten-ing to the countless hundreds of thou-sands of fathers and mothers whose sonshave been delivering the goods since theattack on Pearl Harbor. It certainly isheartening enough to the fathers andmothers of sons who, fighting in theranks of our Allies. have been busily en-gaged in this bloody business of war formuch longer.

The pressure of all-out producti~n isbeginning to slacken off. The desperateneed for the metals which we have pro-duced here in staggering quantities is nolonger so despet'ate as it was. There arestill bottlenecks, to be sure, in manymanufacturing plants where planes andbombers and guns must continue to bedelivered in great quantities.

This is no bid to anyone to reasonthat the war is in the. bag. Our militaryand naval leaders, who certainly knowmuch more about it than any of us. pointto the fight which still remains to bewaged not only in Continental Europe butalso in the Pacific where the Japs haveentrenched themselves deeply. We havewrested from them, in most cases, onlythose. areas which they had already takenfrom us-we are only getting back thatwhich is properly our own. And it willtake plenty of fighting to get it.

We owe to our sons and to the sonsof our friends the obligation of seeingthis war through to a successful finish.That means staying steadily at the jobsassigned to all of us. It means the-'regu-lar purchase of War Bonds. It means,above an. the avoidance of the thoughtthat the race is almost won and that wecan coast in. :To delay victory by assum-ing that victory is won is to postpone thetime when our boys can come back homeagain.

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People, (;'PlacesJEAN AND JOYCE MORGAN are iden-"tical twins, the daughters of Gene Mor-gan of the Purchasing Department atGreat Falls. One of the boys at the ACMClub who had noticed that we had pub-lished a picture of a Butte pin-up girl,suggested that we show a picture of thepin-up pin girls at Great Falls. We askedhim what he meant by pin-up pin girls,and he explained that at the bowlingalleys at the Club, these two attractiveyoungsters were on the job. So we stoodthem up in the lobby and got the shotshown on our front cover. Both thesegirls are seventeen and are in the thirdyear of high school. They've been almostalike since the day they were born-oneweighed four pounds twelve ounces andthe other four pounds th irteen ounces; inseventeen years they have stayed withina pound of each other. As you might ex-pect, the gals have the same preferencesin clothing. but their tastes are alike alsowith regard to food. Their dad tells usthat they are so much alike that, if onegal comes down with a cold, it is only amatter of hours before the other will dothe same. The youngsters are inseparable-they go around together ail the time.

Gene, the father, can tell the girlsapart, as can their mother, but theirschool teachers have a lot of trouble-they haven't yet been able to see whatthe parents do, that there is a slight dif-ference in their voices. One funny thingis that Mr. Morgan's own mother is un-able to tell the girls apart.

The Morgans have two other chil-dren-a third girl is named Joan and sheis twelve. The youngest child is a boy,named John, and he is two.

So far these are the only twin galswe've found among the folks-if youknow of any others, please pass the wordalong to COPPER COMMANDO.

IN THE OFFICE

As welcome as Santa was Herb Heasleyfrom War Production Drive Headquartersin Washington a couple of weeks ago, forHerb brought us the latest news from theCapitol. While in Butte. Herb spoke be-fore the Labor-Management Committeeand also broadcast to the miners goingunderground over the Central Broadcast-in~ System.

Other visitors in the COMMANDOoffice included Doctor E. Alpert andRuth Lusby of the Food Distribution Ad-ministration in Washington and WilliamBroeg of the San Francisco office.

GLAMOUR CIRL

WHEN anybody tells us that a plant hasan outstanding glamour girl, we put ourphotographer under one arm and rush offto find out about it (imagine doing thiswith AI Cusdorf ll .

The gal at Great Falls who has thisunofficial but coveted honor at the Re-duction Works is the gal with the musicalname of Renee De Ranieri. She works inthe Traffic Department at the plant andpinch-hits at the switchboard-she wasbusy at the switchboard the day we got ashot of her.

A few of the interesting things wediscovered about Renee is that she likesclothes, for which nobody would blameher. She has the travel bug and wants,of all places, to see Rio de Janeiro-shehas an aunt down there and the auntseems to have persuaded her that that isone place Rina should see.

How about glamour glrls in otherlocations? We can't believe that theboys at Butte and Anaconda would allowthe title to go by default. so the nomina-tions are open.

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The Younger Set

B LACK EAGLEat' Great Falls is the home ofa great many employees in the Reduction Works

~ there. A certain per cent of these employeeswere born there, married there and now havethir own homes there. The big majority of themattended the Hawthome School-now called theCollins' School. Miss Coliins taught the primarygrade in the Hawthorne School for forty-oneyears and for thirty-nine years of those forty-onewas principal. She is shown with the childrenfrom the Collins' School in. the pictures. Shortlyafter Miss Collins retired in June. 1942. theschool was named in her honor.

Talk to most any of the employees fromBlack Eagle and you'll hear: "You bet I knowMiss Collins. She was my first teacher. Mykids started with her, too." And some of thefolks will tell you that three generations of theirfamily were all taught by Miss Collins. The Palagifamily. shown in the bottom picture, is a typicalBlack Eagle family who have known Miss Collinsthroughout the years. Miss Collins is to the leftin the picture and Mrs. Button to the right, Mrs.Button succeeded Miss Collins as principal. Ken-nard Sieben and Joyce Keenan, Bob Palagi'sgranddaughter, are violinist and pianist for. theschool programs.

Christmas' prograrris formerly were held inthe school, but the crowds outgrew the school andso for the past several years they have been held'in the Clubhouse at the Reduction Works. Thechildren are brought over to the Clubhouse inbuses from the school and meet their familiesthere. This year there was a toy shop play bythe primary grades and Christmas carols and anUncle Sam play by the fourth, fifth and sixthgrades. The big event of the afternoon, ofcourse, was the arrival of Santa-without thewhiskers you'd recognize Claude Stanley-whodistributed popcorn balls and candy to.all thekiddies.

After seeing the children of the men at theReduction Works in Great Falls it's easy to seewhy production records are being topped eachmonth at the 'plant. The men at the Great FallsReduction Works want these children of theirsto have the privileges that they themselves haveknown-which come only from living in a FreeCountry.

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-CLEANSAFETY SLATESA clean sa~ety slate at Creat Falls andEast Helena pays dividends. For eachworking month-free of accidents-theemployee's name is inserted in a capsule.The eligibaity 'for the foremen to havetheir names in the hat for a separate draw-ing is determined by the accident recordof each twenty men under them. Thefiscal safety year closes in I),Itovembersothe drawing can be ,held at the Xmassmoker. For D~ember, 1942, throughNovember, 1943, there were eighty-fouraccidents-forty of them slight and forty-four serious-and that's for around SIX-

teen hundred fifty employees.

HERE are the pictures showing the masterof ceremonies, J. C. Morrisette, DaveLawlor, Safety and Welfare Engineer,and the judges, Judge C. F. Holt and MargSammons, and a few of the lucky ones re-ceiving their War Bonds. Bernal Learywon $100.00 in cash and Robert Woods,East Helena; Edward Olgardt, Peter Mab,Andrew Brozicevich, Herman Berndt, An-thony Slemberger, Elmo Rostad, ClarenceDolager, Frank Sand, Arthur McKirk, EarlRomsted, Philip Mattingly, Asmund Stor-shen, Samuel Holden, Nick Morris, Wil-liam Camp and Peter Brozicevich won$50.00 War Bonds. In the foremen's

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drawing, Clyde Peterson won a $100.00War Bond and T. H. Evans, East Helena,'August Rill and Clarence Murray $50.00War Bonds.

After the suspense of the drawing,the boys all puffed peacefully on thecigars they received as they entered theClubhouse and settled down for somegood entertainment. In addition to theentertainers, shown on the next page,there were movies and another drawingfor door prizes and a shorf talk by R. B.Caples. You could spot the winners of, the three big door-prize turkeys by thebeam on their faces. Food, too! Wegot the one picture before the crowdsurged in. There was a crowd--overfive hundred in attendance. There wasno doubt about the folks enjoying thefood. In case you're lucky, the Xmassmoker is the place to go. Look at the

- fellows taking home candy, fruit cakesand boxes of apples. Representatives cameover from East Helena, shown in the nextto the top left picture, and had good newsto take back, for two East Helena menwon $50.00 War Bonds. We got the shotof the doctors from the clinic just as theywere leaving-saying along with every-one else: "In more ways than one, SAFE-

ou,TV PAYS."

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THIS picture tells its own story. If you pass over it quickly, you'll be doing just what areturned veteran said you would. This is what he said: "There's no need of talking about ,/.the horrors of war, for the people who never see the battle area refute the accounts andhorrors of war, labeling them incredible or unbelievable." He has fifty bombing missionsto his credit and on a watch chain is ~earing a bullet which was removed from his side.,AND HE'S BUYINC WAR BONDS! "